The Never-Ending Task of Understanding Student Learning

AFTER A CENTURY of studying the subject. American scholars and practitioners still have much to discover about what students actually learn in college. As student populations increase in diversity and as learning opportunities spread from campus onto the World Wide Web, the task of capturing this picture of learning is becoming ever more complex.

Authors in this issue demonstrate a persevering spirit of inquiry as they explore and examine rich new ways to engage students in their formal and informal learning experiences. First, Frank Harris III and Laura Struve explore how men in college learn what it means to be masculine and what institutions might do to ameliorate the impact of negative messages that these students receive. Next, Peter Magolda and Glenn Platt take readers into cyberspace in their examination of Web 2.0—electronic learning environments that empower individuals to be both knowledge readers and writers. They lay out the immense opportunities that Web 2.0 technologies afford. In his feature, Robert Rhoads offers a true insider's perspective into the lives of students as he recounts the years he has spent as a Faculty-In-Residence at the University of California at Los Angeles. In Assessment Matters, the methodological “gold standard” for conducting program evaluation is illustrated by Nannette Commander and Teresa Ward, who explain how combined quantitative and qualitative evaluation approaches can richly explain what happens to students in residential learning communities. Finally, in their Bottom Line article, Brenda Marina and Nickole Holmes describe the continuing barriers to equitable access to higher education.

One's entire career in higher education can be spent attempting to get a sense of what happens to students in college. Authors in this issue demonstrate that the daunting nature of this task should not prevent the attempt.